Acerbic, moving and formally astonishing, Michael Prior's second collection explores the enduring impact of the Japanese internment upon his family legacy and his mixed-race identity.

Amid the record-breaking wildfires that scorched British Columbia in 2015 and 2017, the poems in this collection move seamlessly between geographical and psychological landscapes, grappling with cultural trauma and mapping out complex topographies of grief, love and inheritance: those places in time marked by generational memory "when echo crosses echo."

Burning Province is an elegy for a home aflame and for grandparents who had a complex relationship to it — but it is also a vivid appreciation of mono no aware: the beauty and impermanence of all living things. "The fireflies stutter like an apology," Prior writes; "I would be lying to you / if I didn't admit I love them." (From McClelland & Stewart)

Michael Prior is writer, poet and teacher. His poems have appeared in many publications across North America and the U.K., including The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. Prior's poetry explores his Japanese-Canadian identity and the impacts of the Japanese internment upon his family legacy.